Thursday, 15 September 2016

Prisoners Strike.

September 9th saw the beginning of the American prisoners strike. A valiant stand against the massive corruption, ill treatment and downright brutal abuse within the American prison system. A stand against the slave labour, the use of prisons as a corporate profit making empire.

As usual, that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, has been silent on this event as it is a stand against the existing capitalist exploitation. The prisoners brave stand should be supported by all who say they are in favour of freedom and justice. Support is being shown across the globe from Greece to UK, more is needed.

Anyone relying on mainstream media wouldn’t know it, but the US
prison system is shaking up right now.No one knows how big the initial
strike was yet, but the information is slowly leaking out between the
cracks in the prisons’ machinery of obscurity and isolation. Here are
some speculative numbers we can share with confidence at this time:

At least 29 Prisons were Affected

These are places where either prisoners reported to outside
supporters, or where the authorities locked the institutions down
probably because of protests. We expect this number to rise dramatically
as we gather reports from prisoners and keep calling prisons in the
coming days and weeks.

More than 24,000 Prisoners missed Work

The facilities experiencing full shutdowns that we know about hold
approximately 24,000 prisoners. There are probably thousands more who
didn’t work that we don’t know about, yet. Many are still are not
working today and intend to continue the strike until their demands are
satisfied or the prisons break under the economic strain of operating
without their slaves.

“This is how struggle starts … I’m very, very encouraged … Keep going … I don’t think it can be stopped.” —Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, co-founder of Black Autonomy Federation and original Black Panther Party member.

Summer is drawing to an end here in the South, but in the region’s
prisons—and across the most incarcerated nation on earth—things are just
starting to heat up.

Friday (September 9), marked the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising. It also saw the launch
of a coordinated series of nationwide work stoppages and hunger strikes
by incarcerated Americans, the largest of its kind in history.

Organizers (and, as a formerly incarcerated person, I am one of them)
currently estimate that incarcerated workers at over 40 facilities in
at least 24 states are participating. Since prison administrations’
knee-jerk response to these actions is to lock down the facilities—and
since, as I predicted when I previewed these actions in The Influence
last month, mainstream media coverage is muted—it’s difficult to
gauge precisely how widespread the strikes are, where exactly inmates
are striking, and how successful they’ve been.

But reports have trickled in from around the country, and through
networks of organizers, media reports and communications from
incarcerated people, we’ve worked to keep track.